"I know what a Philadelphian is," said Prue.
Davy laughed.
"The words are very much alike," smiled the Chief Gardener. "They both mean brotherhood, and come from some old Greek words. Philadelphia means brotherly love, and Monadelphia means brotherly union. You see those stamens are all brothers and are joined together as one. All plants with such stamens are called Monadelphians."
"A stamen has three parts," Davy went on, "its filament, its anther, and its pollen. The filament is the stem, the anther is its cap, and the pollen is the dust which falls on the pistil and helps to make the seed."
A PISTIL AND CALYX AND A COMPLETE FLOWER
Very carefully Davy took away the ring of stamens, and left only the little yellowish-green center of the sorrel flower.
"This is where we get the seed," he said, as gravely as an old college professor lecturing to a class. "This is the pistil, and it has three parts, too: the pod, the style, and the stigma. The stigma is the little piece at the top which catches the pollen from the anthers. The style is the stem, and the pod is the big part below which holds the seeds."
He held up the little stripped flower again. "This pistil has five styles and five stigmas," he went on. "A good many flowers have more than one. It has ten stamens, too—two stamens for each style, and five petals and five sepals. You can divide it by five all the way through."
"Even to the seed-pod," added the Chief Gardener. "It has five divisions," and he cut the tiny green pulp and showed them with his magnifying-glass. "The little sorrel flower is one of the most perfect of flowers—one of the most perfect in a great class of flowers called Ex-o-gens. There is one other class called End-o-gens. Those words are from the Greek, too. Exogen means outward-growing. Endogen means inward-growing. The stem of an Exogen grows by layers, as most trees grow."